Conventional treatment of malignant conditions by such as surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy have exhibited favorable results in many cases, while failing to be completely or satisfactorily effective in all cases. However, a historic and continuing problem and limitation in radiation therapy has been to maximize the so-called therapeutic index, defined as the ratio of maximum tolerable dose to the dose at which unacceptable levels of normal tissue toxicity occur, that is, to determine or establish a minimum dose required for effective tumor control. This goal however has proven particularly difficult to achieve in treating a variety of cancers including those of the central nervous system, liver and various types of metastatic tumors.
Notwithstanding the general issue of toxicity, the treatment rate of metastic tumors of the spinal cord and brain have not improved appreciably in several years, using conventional surgical techniques and proton beam therapy. This is because dosage that can be delivered to malignant CNS tumors is limited by the tolerance of normal brain of spinal cord to radiation. Recently, the concepts of microbeam radiation, grid radiation, and spatial fractionalization of X-rays for therapeutic purposes have appeared. This proved helpful in various clinical settings, for example, treatment of prostate cancer. Three-dimensional imaging, taken in combination with micro-beam radiation, enables proton treatment to be more advantageously directed than in the past. X-rays have also been lacking as a solution in the treatment of malignancies at a skin or tissue surface because conventional X-rays, due to their lack of a charge and mass, result dissipation of their energy at or near the surface of the tissue of interest and also are more prone to scattering of undesirable energy beyond the cancer site. This undesirable pattern of energy placement is also a problem in proton beam therapy and can result in unnecessary damage to healthy tissue, often preventing physicians from use of sufficient radiation to effectively control the cancer.
Proton beam strategies include the treatment or doping of the malignant tissue with a contrast agent which, because of the electron shell structure of the dopant will increase the amount of the target dose absorbed by the target tissue, this method commonly referred to as photon activation therapy.
Recently, the concept of bi-directional interlaced microbeam radiation therapy (BIMRT) (see U.S. Pat. No. 7,194,063 (2007) to Dilmanian, et al entitled Methods for Implementing Microbeam Radiation Therapy appeared in the art. The teaching of Dilmanian is that of the use of intersecting and non-intersecting arrays of photon or x-ray microbeams, that is, the use of two spatially distinct microbeam paths together with, preferably, a third microbeam path. The first and second microbeam paths may be interleaved with each other, while the third microbeam path is angularly rotated and laterally translated with respect to the first and second paths. The teaching however of Dilmanian, and other art known to the inventor, is still that of the use of a single form of electromagnetic radiation, however larger in number the beams or microbeams which co-act with each other, whether with or without the use of contrast to assist in the “targeting” of the tumor of interest.
The instant invention is a departure from the above and other know art in its concurrent use, either in vivo or ex vivo (prior to tumor contact) of nuclear or electron resonant electromagnet resonance with known X-ray and photon beam therapies of various types.